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Thursday, May 19, 2011

We change sex not gender

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum thanks to Teagan. I woke up and realized how totally screwed up everything really is. These assholes running around pretending to represent transsexuals have slowly but surely been usurping what being born transsexual is all about. By simply pushing the topic from "sex" to "gender", as in gender dysphoria, they have actually almost won.

A few definitions first so forgive me and these were copied from elsewhere.

"Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women.

"Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers
appropriate for men and women.

To put it another way:

"Male" and "female" are sex categories, while "masculine" and "feminine" are gender categories.

The concepts of sex and gender are really dimorphic in many ways or in plain English truly distinctly different. Gender is dependent on where you live and what culture influences you. Sex is male or female and there are distinct sex characteristics for male and female. Those of us born transsexual truly want to change those sex characteristics or we want breasts and a vagina verses a penis and a flat hairy chest. We ant curves verses muscles in general. We want to truly be the sex we should have been at birth.

Since gender is a social construct that defines roles for the masculine and the feminine it does not necessarily have anything to do with being transsexual. Many of us are willing to take on those social roles because we feel it is part of what defines one as male or female but it really is what defines one as masculine or feminine and that may or may not be independent of your sex characteristics.

When I was growing up if someone assumed I was a female they would have looked at me as a "tomboy" while if they assumed or knew I was male they looked at me as feminine. That is a gender issue or a gender role issue. Physically because of hormonal issues at I guess one could say I tended toward female but under the cloth I still had one male sex characteristic and it drove me crazy. I needed to change my sex because my body was just plain wrong down there. The DSM uses gender dysphoria in order to cover a broad spectrum in society but when they inserted that term in 1980 they shafted everyone born transsexual. We do not suffer from gender dysphoria we suffer from sex characteristic dysphoria. Now I realize some will scream this cannot be right but look at it clearly. I and many like me knew I was a girl and firmly believed it. What drove me crazy was not that I could not dress and live as a girl but the simple fact as I approached puberty like every "normal" girl I wanted my breasts, my curves, boys, and this was exacerbated by the fact I now knew I was male. It is what drives many of us that hated that organ we were cursed with. It was just plain wrong. It did not belong on us. Our bodies were wrong with it.

What has happened is many have been perverted by assholes like Blanchard and Bailey and forced to change how they truly feel about themselves. Wanting a female body for a transsexual is as normal as a woman wanting a female body. There is nothing wrong with this although some would want us to feel that way. Woman like their bodies and being female or there would not be a billion dollar cosmetic surgery business. As long as transsexuals want their female body for the simple reason a girl then one is not some category defined by some stupid men like Bailey and Blanchard. I needed my body corrected because I liked boys "a lot" and I wanted to be with a boy but only as a girl and that meant a girl's body.

Ironically in my day, a long time ago, we all thought like this and gender roles is a part of it for the majority of us but not for all of us. I wanted to be beautiful and desirable to men and wanted a family, a husband, and the house with the white picket fence which was how girls from the 50's were programmed. I change over time and became liberated a lot but quite simply if I had been told I could live as a girl but NOT have my sex characteristics changed to female i would have preferred death. Most of my friends felt the same way. Fixing my body was the most important thing to me.

By pushing the issue towards gender the DSM and the idiots managing it have built themselves a nice cottage industry out of all those that want to push gender boundaries and not change the most important sex characteristic there is for a transsexual. They want to keep the genitalia they were born with. If that is the case you are transgender and not transsexual. It is the reason the term transsexual was chosen originally. We cross sex boundaries by wanting to change our sex characteristics to the opposite of those we were born with. It is this that drives us not cross-dressing to change our sex. Changing gender is easy comparatively. Dressing as a female does not make one transsexual.

One does not decide to "become" transsexual. It is either there or it isn't because it is part of the very core of one's being. There is nothing more confusing to a child than looking at themselves and realizing their body has the wrong parts. Innately we humans know what is right and what is wrong with our bodies when it comes to our sex. Being transsexual is not something that shows up "late" in life on a weekday evening. It is born into the core of our being and it is what drives us. It drives some of us harder than others but it drives us all to fix this horrible mistake. Quite simply a girl does not have a penis and a boy does not have a vagina. It really truly is that simple.Now those in the transgender community cannot allow that to stand because the transvestites and cross-dressers could not walk the streets freely in essence pretending to be transsexual when they really have a social condition and in most cases not a gender condition but they want you to think they do. How many transvestites or cross-dressers really want to take on the gender role characteristics mentioned in the definition above? None that I know of. They would shit bricks before they got paid like women got paid or had to be subservient in some societies like women are required to be or be restricted like women are at certain country clubs or be barred from certain exclusive men only clubs like there are in NYC or lord forbid face that glass ceiling in business many of us felt. They want the best of both worlds and they manage to get it by infringing on what few areas we women have.

It all comes down to money and power and men are more accustom to wielding it although some of us women have learned the game but it is an uphill battle. Now these same men want those born transsexual to allow them to cloud the picture as to who is and who is not transsexual by simply usurping our category and pulling it under transgender which is totally NOT WHAT transsexual is about. We change sex. Changing gender roles may or may not be part of that depending on one's station in life. For most born transsexual slipping into the feminine gender role is easy if done early in life and more difficult later in life but many of us can flip between being feminine to tomboy in a second like many genetic women can. A transvestite or a cross-dresser would be appalled at the thought of being a tomboy or acting like one when en-femme. They emulate women and that means heels, bras, skirts, and pantyhose and not cutoffs, your husband's tee-shirt, and a game of softball with friends.

Girls both genetic and those born transsexual go through stages in life. Early on genetic girls are what we kids in NYC called "high maintenance" when they are learning to become girls. Most girls crave makeup, hair, cloths and girly things early on and this is typical of those born transsexual. Having your nails perfect is important. Having your makeup perfect is important. All girls and women go through this and some never stop being this way but many can flip between high and "low maintenance" and I learned that through the genetic girlfriends I have been fortunate to have that knew nothing of my past. It is those friendships I treasure above all because I learned being a girl and a woman was not all heels, dresses, makeup, nails, and girly.

I remember as a child how appalled I was when forced to play boy sports. I also remember how much fun I had playing flag football with my husband and his friends and their wives. How much fun we had playing softball or I had as he tried to teach me to fly. How much fun we had rooting for our sports teams. How appalled he was when I dragged him and my nephew to his first Metallica concert and how hard I laughed when he admitted he enjoyed it.

We change our sex because we know it is wrong. The gender role we live is fluid like life. Some days we like being girly and some days we do not. It does not mean we are bending the gender boundaries. It simply means we are living life. Bending gender boundaries deliberately is akin to acting out frustrations.

Transsexuals do not play with gender. We change our sex so we can live the gender role we want and it may or may not be girly over time. Transvestites, cross-dressers, and those under the gender variant banner play with their gender which is completely different from playing with one's sex although they would like everyone to overlook that. Changing sex is what differentiates us from them and it is the single idea they want to hide from society when they are playing their chosen gender role for the day.

They play a gender role and we live in our correct sex. That is a very big difference and let us not forget it.

22 comments:

Very well said! I've been writing about this for, well, for a long time. Sex should not be confused with gender, and the conflation of the two leads us into the kind of confusion we have now.

My gender was actually fine. It just wasn't acceptable to society in a male-bodied person. I never changed gender. I did, however, change sex, and that was what I always needed to do. Then my natural gender fit better, at least in society's eyes. Like you, even though I'm pretty girly much of the time, I don't stick rigidly to that. I'm not afraid of sometimes doing "boy" things, as any woman might.

I will date myself. I remember the original with Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford but it had Buster Keaton's final film performance.

I have never seen it on Broadway or the West End in London but the original film was quite funny.

I am afraid this post will go most peoples heads. People have been conditioned to believe in gender dysphoria but I know I suffered from sex characteristics dysphoria. I hated that fracking penis because it was just plain wrong.

I did kind of chuckle at the "high maintenance" part. Especially about the nails. It drives me absolutely nuts if my nails aren't perfect. But, then if you knew what I do for a living it might surprise you to think that I would even try to keep them up! I know it surprises my customers.

I wish you were correct about the meaning of gender in ordinary usage. Sadly, the english language is a muddled mess. One perfectly acceptable meaning of the word gender _is_ sex. There are people who take advantage of the multiple meanings of gender, in common usage, to muddy the waters of discussion to their advantage. They game the word gender.

Wait, Hold on one cotton picking moment! I thought being female was all about a performance! It is isn't it? I mean to be a woman only requires the right kind of panties and the kinda balls it takes to fill em with doesn't it?

Oh Dear, seems now I've gone and gotten all confused again!

I mean not that long ago.... I was under the firm delusion that boys had an outtie and girls had an innie... and that boys wanted more than anything to put their outtie into a girls innie and that girls also wanted boys to put their outtie into their innies more than anything!

But in the interests of her readers. Mis Know-It-All bravely went a-wandering the high and low roads of Blog-O-stan and what she has found was rather curious and it has totally reshaped her way of thinking let me tell you! It seems that with the exception of very few hate filled transphobic passing privileged sites such as this one (something else she "waer larned"on her travels) The whole of Blog-O-Stan is in agreement that what's in a girls panties is of no consequence! So I guess boys want girls to stick their outtie into their outtie and innie and the outtie goes... goes where exactly?

Darn, hold on... I keep having to down aspirin just to say this stuff lest my head explode

Now where was I? Oh yes! And whats more, we've all become lesbians no matter what the configuration of your bits, and besides, a penis, according to what I was told over and over again, can be just as feminine as any old Va-Jay-Jay ever could!

Odd thing about that though... that info was always being told to me by someone whom it seems gladly and proudly owned a penis and never by one who owned a Va-Jay-Jay! Do you think that might be relevant somehow?

I am not sure what dictionary or site you are using but gender is not the same as sex and one would need some obscure meaning by some highly unknowledgeable individual to cabal up the notion that gender and sex mean the same.

They do not and have not meant the same in the transsexual community since forever.

Alas... The price of of one aquireing a public school education always seems to be going up and up (or down depending upon your perspective) and the coin is logic and critical thinking!

Or perhaps it's not that we as a society are getting bunches more stupider, despite the obviousness of that very thing happening. Maybe it's that words, particularly those slippery English words have a very odd ways of up and walking off to mean whatever the speaker whats them to mean?

Gender, at least from what Miz Know-It-All as gleaned from her travels seems to be right at the head of the list! Frankly at this point Miz Know-It-All isn't sure that the word actually has any real meaning anymore.

I guess that means I'm free then to use it anyway Ol' way I want now can't I? So saying that "I was watching cartoons this morning and the coyote ran off the gender and then a big huge gender fell on his (hir?) head and then he was run over by a gender and the road runner went phttttttt~ and ran off down the gender!" Makes perfect sense!

Course if I keep this up, I fear that Monica Sandeen, Autumn Helms and Mister wish I was a rich white bitch Roberts may just show up on the island uninvited wanting a "girl to girl" confab.

Oh dear Oh Dear! I do believe in sex! I do believe in sex! I do believe in sex!

I'm guessing it all started in the US, a sex-obsessed yet puritanical society. Gender, feminine or masculine, was a grammatical term that was also applied to behaviour. Then at some point (I don't know when), it became a euphemism for sex so people didn't have to say or write "sex" any more. From there, it wasn't hard for some to conflate the concepts of sex and gender, especially among those who thought sexual dimorphism was somehow "essentialist." And now we have a full blown mess.

I could make many arguments about it, I'm pretty sure that if you're a Brit though, you'd just start up with some outlandish story about how the commonwealth is the equivalent of one big spectrum and all the encompassed countries are just varying degrees if Britishness. You and I both know that the reality is everyone knows Australia is the "real deal" when it comes to cool and the Brits are quite simply pretenders. :-P

That is an interesting comment and probably based on the premise that the extreme religious right has more power than they actually have. There are nitwits everywhere and there is a fringe element everywhere.

In point of fact only a small minority of overtly religious and morally uptight people in the US have issues with children that were born transsexual. This is an area you do not want discussed because they have issues but not with the young ones.

"By pushing the issue towards gender the DSM and the idiots managing it have built themselves a nice cottage industry out of all those that want to push gender boundaries and not change the most important sex characteristic there is for a transsexual. They want to keep the genitalia they were born with" ~Liz

And THAT my dear, is basis of all this "psuedo-psycho/social genderbabble. Pure unaduerated FOLDEROL, hoping to obscure and obfuscate the simple REALITY that trans-SEXUALS PHYSICALLY trans-FORM their SEX, (genitalia) and trans-GENDERS, "trans"r change their GENDER "presentation", "expression", "lifestyle", etc.

Liz, usage in "the transsexual community" doesn't extend beyond that "community". It would be convenient and appealing to be able to redefine "gender" and make it more limited, but we haven't the power to do so. When we baldly assert the more restrictive meaning, anyone who wishes to disagree has plenty of dictionaries on their side.

For example, limited to simply a quick on-line check:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gender - see second definition

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender - see second definition

Don't like these sources? Go to your local library and check an unabridged. Let me know if you find any that doesn't include a valid definition of gender as sex in the list of definitions for the word.

I wish this wasn't true, but I've been caught several times by people who wanted to cloud the issues. Fore warned is fore armed.